"Google Inc is working on plans to start a venture-capital arm," the publication said quoting several people briefed on the discussion.

Further, quoting two of these people, the report said the group would be lead by David Drummond who is Google's senior Vice-President of corporate development and chief legal officer.

"Google has hired William Maris, a 33-year-old former entrepreneur who has worked as an investor, to help set up the venture. How the group will be structured and what sort of investments it is likely to target remain unclear," The Wall Street Journal said in an article published in its online edition.

For the second quarter ended June 30, 2008, Google reported revenues to the tune of 5.37 billion dollars, a jump of 39 per cent, compared to the year-ago period.

While announcing the results, Google's Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said, "Strong international growth as well as sustained traffic increases on Google's web properties propelled us to another strong quarter, despite a more challenging economic environment."

"As we continue to focus on innovating in our core business of search, ads and apps, we also look forward to enhancing the experience of our users and expanding the reach of our advertisers and partners with new technologies and formats, particularly as our integration of DoubleClick gains momentum and creates new opportunities in display advertising and elsewhere," he added.